The “You Can’t Do It” Voices

Tell me if this sounds familiar… I have a brain that persists in telling me that I am Doing It Wrong and that Everyone Else Is More Capable Than You and also that This Is Hard and You Can’t Do It, Ha Ha. What is “This”? Sometimes it’s writing. Sometimes it’s my day job. Sometimes it’s adulting. I would just like to register, for the record, some recent evidence to the contrary. Since I’ve blogged before about how the brain-voices relate to writing, this time I’ll focus on other parts of Life. Exhibit 1: The Day Job I’ve held the same job for nearly 12 years. Parts of it I’m really good at. Other parts still make me flail around. But on the whole, my You Can’t Do It voices have learned to be quiet more often than not. Then, last fall, my boss asked me to train with a co-worker who was retiring, so I could hold down the fort until she could be replaced. Her position doesn’t have much overlap with mine; I don’t really have the background for the job. To make things trickier, I still needed to do my regular job too (luckily we were able to shift around some of the workload and responsibilities). Cue the voices, loud and clear. But saying no wasn’t an option. I said yes. So far, I haven’t made any horrible mistakes that cost lots of money. I’ve kept things going, mostly. It’s been a scramble sometimes, keeping up with…

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Sun Touched

by Erin Zarro a free serial story in the Fey Touched universe Part 1 Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 I woke up in filth. A dirty, cold floor. Two mice chased each other along one equally dirty wall. It was stained with who-knew-what. Musty, sweat-filled air surrounded me. And, I could smell blood. I looked down. All I wore was a simple cotton shift that opened in the back. I had a bad feeling I knew what that was for. A pool of blood surrounded my leg, so I must have gotten injured somehow. I couldn’t remember what had happened. I was in a small prison cell. A filthy cot sat in one corner, no blankets. A bucket sat in the opposite corner, and apparently, someone had emptied it recently, because I did not smell the stink of human waste. Thank Artemis for that. My prison was in a dark, large room. All I remembered was fighting the rogues with my tribe. I’d spun around to stake one. Then, a punch to my gut, and nothing else. Where were the others? Had they been captured, too? I shivered, curling up into a little ball Freaking hell. Was anyone around? I licked my dry lips. “Hello? Anyone there?” “I see you’ve woken up,” a male voice said from the shadows. He stepped forward, and I saw that he was outside of my cell. And that he was one of the rogues. I uncurled and stood,…

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10 Thoughts From a Sleep-Deprived Writer’s Brain

Yeah, so I’ve had a bout of insomnia for the past few months. Usually, I snap out of it within a few days, but I’ve had some other things working in the background and it’s been BAD. I’ve tried everything and no luck. It is so bad that I am not even sure what day it is. I think it’s Tuesday. Is it Tuesday? Crap, I hope it’s Tuesday. I am constantly asking myself what day it is. According to my research, you cannot “cure” sleep deprivation or “catch up” on sleep. What’s lost is lost. Which really sucks. So this may be a bit of a disjointed, weird list. Just roll with it, k? So, on to the thoughts! 1) I did dream last night, so I must have slept a bit at least. Something about me drawing my own book covers, and showing them off. In the dream, they were in crayon. Yes. Oops. (I assure you, Ever Touched’s cover will NOT be in crayon. Promise.) What on earth would lead me to dream that? I’ve got the cover figured out. I just need to, yanno, do it. (In between editing projects). Thinking about lining up all those sci-fi doodads is already making me tired. Yawn….. 2) My typing accuracy is for shit right now. I either hit the wrong letters, or skip them altogether, or smoosh whole words together. I like that word: “smoosh.” I want to smoosh something now, just because I, in my sleep-deprived addled…

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The Smallest of All Steps

Happy New Year, friends! I think the world in general has had quite enough of 2016. Here’s hoping for better things in 2017. On a personal writerly level, I had a very mixed year. I released my first published novel (co-authored with Kit), which was amazing, and then dove into a months-long promotional campaign for it, which was interesting and educational and sometimes fun, but not so amazing. (Except the two book launches. Those were pretty neat.) One of my co-workers at the day job bought my book recently, and today she walked past and waved it at me with a bookmark in it. That was also pretty neat. But the promo campaign has been over for months, and I’ve written almost nothing since. You may or may not be a writer, but I’m sure you know this about habits: if you let them drop, the longer you’ve been away from them, the harder it is to pick them up again. They start to feel big and scary and insurmountable. I’ve fallen into that trap before. For months. And writer who are not writing? Not the most pleasant people to be around, let me tell you. For starters, they tend to mope around and complain of existential angst, while their family members (and sometimes, the writers themselves) wonder why they can’t be content with normal diversions and enjoyable things like regular people, or alternatively, how it can be so hard to make stuff up with one’s brain. *ahem* But 2017…

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Operating Systems

A poem by Siri Paulson He was an apple boy she was an android girl living their lives side by side orbits and orbits, never intersect lost in the space ‘twixt the stars. He went for coffee here, white earbuds and logos on every table; played on the blue side of app-based games, drank his beer at the chosen locations, walked the streets with his tribe. She loved her artisan tea café, black tablets and laptops everywhere near; played with the reds, talked smack to the blues, drank her artisan ciders one gastropub over. They crossed paths outside and went their own ways. His school taught him iOS, hers taught her Linux; he learned to draw and she programmed on Windows. They never saw the same job ads; Google showed them half the world only. His search results, social media feeds, the ads that followed him through his day, pointed all to one reality. Living on the flip side, she saw black where he saw white, two views almost entirely unlike. One saw hope where the other saw fear. Change was coming too slow, or maybe too fast. Tilt the world like a kaleidoscope, and watch the facts fall into place; then tilt again and see them shift. The patterns are only what you see. The social networks where they hung out watched where they clicked, liked, touched; fed them more of the same, hid what didn’t match. Their cell usage, buying patterns, where the eye lingered, all reinforced, and…

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